Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/215

 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

ORDER OF THE GARTER.

Neither the time when the Order of the Garter was founded, nor the cause of its foundation, can any longer be traced with precision; and, in the absence of all authentic records, fable and tradition have been called in to supply their place. The public muniments afford us no light on this remote topic, and the annals of the Order itself are, for nearly two centuries, exceedingly imperfect. The statutes of Epwarp III. have perished long ago, and the so-called copies of them bear internal marks of having been compiled at a much later period. The Register, usually known as the Black Book, though treating of the Order from its foundation, was not drawn up in its present form till near the end of Henry the Eighth's reign, when its history begins, for the first time, to assume precision and regularity.

Selden fixes, as the foundation of the, St. George's Day, in the 18th year of King Edward III. and this statement is corroborated by Froissart. The account given by the old Chronicler is, as is usual with him, so naive and so vivid that, like a painting, it brings the whole scene at once before our eyes:—"At this time there came into the mind